The most innovative designers consciously reject the standard option box and cultivate an appetite for thinking wrong.

In one of my lectures on Customer Service, I played a 6:23 min YouTube video from VocalLabs called Ordinary Indignity that followed someone’s customer service experience with HP’s Technical Service. In this video, it appears that HP would like to have a file on each customer and the specs of their machine. Watching this interaction allowed us to discuss the benefits of collecting data when the customer contacts your company and the dangers of doing so at the expense of customer service.

Some of the call statistics VocalLabs presented:
16% – fraction of the call spent listening to hold music
15% – fraction of the call spent talking to a computer
44% – fraction of the call spent looking up and reading model numbers, serial numbers, and file numbers
16% – fraction of the call spent talking about the customer’s problem
Progress made towards solving customer’s problem – NONE
(I’m not sure where the other 9% went!)

They go on to say that the company may have lost a customer for life and asked how much investment in advertising and marketing did that customer represent.

One of my students from the Customer Service course recently sent me a transcript of her experience with Lexar. Much to my surprise (and her disappointment), the customer experience was very similar to that shown in the video. Here is the transcript of the conversation via Lexar Media’s Live Chat:

Welcome to Lexar Media’s Live Chat. A Live Chat agent will join you in a moment… Please do not begin typing until you have been connected to an agent.
Hello, my name is Ravichandran . How may I help you? Student: Hello, I have a Lexar JumpDrive and I used it to store a project that need to be handed in today, unfortunately, when I tried retreiving the data, I received a message from word indicating that my data was corrupt, and file could not be retrieved. Is it possible to retrieve my report. Please help, much thanks,Ravichandran: Okay, I will help you in this issue.Ravichandran: If you could provide me with the model number of your JumpDrive? The model number should be on the back of your JumpDrive and it starts with JD.Student: OK just one moment, I will checkRavichandran: Sure.Student: Sorry its written very small, all I could make out is N12310Ravichandran: Okay, I understand you need help in recovering the data from the JumpDrive, am I correct?Student: Yes, thank youRavichandran: We are sorry to inform you that we have closed the data recovery services for all type of jump drive; if you want to recover the data then you need to contact the third party data recovery shop. Please logon to website to find the data recovery shopStudent: Thanks anyway!Ravichandran: I apologize for any inconvenience you may have encountered while using our product.Ravichandran: Is there anything else I can help you with?Student: No!.Ravichandran: If there is nothing further I can assist you with, I’d like to thank you for visiting Lexar..com. Have a great day. Student: Thanks!

Would it not have been more efficient use of everyone’s time if the CSR stated right away that they do not offer data recovery services for JumpDrives and provide the link instead of taking down the info and then telling the customer to find it on the website? Lexar can capture the demographic info they need on the live chat BEFORE the CSR comes on. That way they would know the issue and provide the link right away.

This will definitely make for a nice case study the next time I teach Customer Service!

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